Animal Aid has captured exclusive footage from a game bird hatchery (Heart of England Game Farm, Warwickshire) which shows hatching and live chicks being tossed into a macerator – a high-speed grinder.
In the film, you can clearly see chicks hatching out of eggs – just before they are thrown into the macerator. The film also shows hatched chicks, presumed to be unsuitable for selling, being thrown into the machine.
At a second game farm (Bettws Hall in Wales), trays of eggs are seen being loaded into the macerator but are not even checked for signs of life. Yet on the audio, you can hear chicks cheeping and close-ups of the trays show birds moving about.
Shockingly, killing live birds in this way is not illegal. By law, farms are allowed to kill chicks in this way until they are 72 hours old.
At the first location – Heart of England Game Farm– the footage covers a whole day inside the hatchery, where trays and trays of chicks are taken out of the incubators and sorted onto a production line. At the end of the conveyor belt, the chicks are loaded into boxes to be sold to game farms or shoots – their destiny being to be used as feathered targets for shooters.
The footage also shows chicks being dropped on the ground, getting stuck in the machinery and being kicked out from under the conveyor belt. Eggs that are not yet hatched are tossed into the macerator. We also witnessed some live chicks being thrown into the macerator.
Take action!